Political Science Honors ProjectsCopyright (c) 2015 Macalester College All rights reserved.http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors
Recent documents in Political Science Honors Projectsen-usThu, 29 Jan 2015 01:45:10 PST3600"Like Building a Human Being": The Construction of Democracy in Contemporary Russiahttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/47
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/47Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:03:24 PST
This thesis explores the themes and tropes of democracy that appear in Russian Presidents' Federal Assembly Addresses from 2008-2013. Based on its analysis of these important political texts, the thesis argues that Presidents Medvedev and Putin's democratic discourse places more value on economic security as a marker of citizens' ability to participate in society than on Western liberal values such as free speech, fair elections, etc. Additionally, the thesis suggests that this conception of democracy as a regime defined by the values of economic security and socio-political stability is fueled by a sense of nostalgia for the Soviet era.
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Mary KennedyBiting the Bullet? Assessing the Genuine Advancement of Human Security in the Arms Trade Treatyhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/46
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/46Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:03:22 PST
The Arms Trade Treaty is hailed as a historic achievement in advancing human security by requiring states to put human lives over profit in decisions about conventional arms sales. In this thesis, I critically examine this claim. First, I assess the extent to which the ATT text represents a genuine advancement of human security, and second, I consider whether the ATT's operationalization is likely to change states' priorities in arms transfer decisions. Through a textual analysis of the ATT and case studies of the arms control experiences in the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Canada, I argue that the ATT does not genuinely advance human security and further that it is unlikely to have a positive impact in practice. Although the ATT advances both a human security and state security narrative a dissonance exists between the human security approach in the preamble and legal text. While the preamble takes a maximalist human security approach, the legal text only advances a minimalist human security account in the export controls that only prohibit transfers in cases where the item might be used to commit mass atrocities. The export assessments only ask states to consider the transfer's potential in contributing to "serious" violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law. Second, regardless of the states' rhetorical commitment to human security principles and the existence of national laws to protect against such transfers, domestic backdrops explain why the US, Russia, the UK and Canada alike transfer arms to states that violate human rights. Thus, these domestic factors create a policy practice discrepancy and suggest that the ATT's minimal human security advancements, whether ratified or not, is unlikely to have a positive impact on the practices of states.
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Selja VassnesNo more 9/11s: Reconceptualizing national security and the creation of an American garrison state.http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/45
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/45Tue, 27 May 2014 08:55:40 PDT
The NSA’s electronic surveillance program unsettled many Americans as an abuse of government power. In my research I reconcile this program with traditional American civil-military relations and conceptions of national security. I apply these theories to the Cold War and War on Terror, exploring how in both cases the US built a national security state using legislation, bureaucracy, and legitimizing rhetoric to respond to the Soviet and terrorist threats. I find that 9/11 expanded the American conception of national security, which precipitated the NSA surveillance program. Without significant public and Congressional pushback, the current national security state is likely to be permanent.

Advisor: Dr. Andrew Latham, Political Science

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Jacob M. WaxmanConstituting the Entrepreneurial Poor: Social Capital, Development, and the Contemporary Microfinance Industryhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/44
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/44Tue, 27 May 2014 08:51:13 PDT
The contemporary microfinance industry struggles to manage the tensions that arise from its competing roles as a tool in the fight against poverty and as a lucrative financial market. I contend that the microfinance industry manages these tensions through discourses that emphasize the entrepreneurialism of the poor in the Global South. Furthermore, I argue that the industry attempts to constitute the entrepreneurial "microfinance subject" through networks of coalitions, discourses, personnel, and technologies. These networks produce and distribute new forms of risk onto these subjects, necessitating a critical response.
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Luke AllenMaking War and Securing Peace: The Viability of Peace Enforcement as a Mechanism for Promoting and Securing Civil War Terminationhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/43
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/43Thu, 02 Jan 2014 14:01:07 PST
Peace enforcement—the threat or use of military force to compel belligerent adherence to a civil war settlement—has become increasingly salient in the past decade. Using a hazards analysis of all civil wars and associated third party interventions between 1945 and 2013 in addition to three structured, focused case studies, I argue that peace enforcement operations that 1) utilize the appropriate typological spoiler management strategy and 2) maintain legitimacy and impartiality through close cooperation with UN peacekeepers, are the most successful at catalyzing civil war termination and securing durable peace. I also provide a theoretical framework through which to study peace enforcement operations that builds upon Stephen Stedman and Barbara Walter’s conceptualization of spoilers, third party security guarantees, and the strategic alteration of belligerent cost-benefit calculus.
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Shawn H. GreeneSocial Media and the Transformation of the Humanitarian Narrative: A Comparative Analysis of Humanitarian Discourse in Libya 2011 and Bosnia 1994http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/42
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/42Thu, 12 Sep 2013 13:06:05 PDT
Within humanitarian discourse, there is a prevailing narrative: the powerful liberal heroes are saving the helpless, weak victims. However, the beginning of the 21st century marks the expansion of the digital revolution throughout lesser-developed states. Growing access to the Internet has enabled aid recipients to communicate with the outside world, giving them an unprecedented opportunity to reshape discourses surrounding humanitarianism. Through a comparative discourse analysis of Libyan Tweets, 1994 newspaper reports on Bosnia, and 2011 newspaper reports on Libya, this paper analyzes whether aid recipient discourse can resist the dominant humanitarian narrative and if that resistance can influence dominant discourse, fundamentally altering the humanitarian enterprise. I found Libyan Twitter users’ representations of aid and aid recipients, as well as their use of disruptive images and humor, challenged the dominant hero-victim narrative and had a limited, but meaningful impact on mass media discourse.
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Ellen NobleThe Development of a New Paradigm of Humanitarian Intervention: Assessing the Responsibility to Protecthttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/41
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/41Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:35:37 PDT
The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) concept aimed to clarify the relationship between state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, and its invocation during the recent intervention in Libya provides an opportunity to assess its impact. This project compares the events of Libya with the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina of the early 1990s, examining the framing of these conflicts as well as the perceived role of other states, the engagement of international organizations with the concept, and the effect on operations during the humanitarian interventions themselves. Providing a historical comparison more accurately situates the contributions of RtoP in the re-prioritization of human rights over states sovereignty, while also providing a chance to highlight recurring concerns with the emerging doctrine.
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Jayne DiscenzaResponding to the Affordable Care Act: Health Insurance Exchange Policy Diffusionhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/40
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/40Tue, 21 May 2013 11:40:58 PDT
Following the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the government of each U.S. state either adopted a state run health insurance exchange or defaulted to a federally run exchange. This study uses event history analysis to examine this decision making process and the broader diffusion of health insurance exchange policy among the states. The results of this analysis indicate that states with a government controlled by the Democratic Party, a moralistic political culture, and a large uninsured population were more likely to adopt a state run exchange at an earlier date.
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Margaret Worman“Normalizing” Japan?: Contestation, Identity Construction, and the Evolution of Security Policyhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/39
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/39Tue, 21 May 2013 11:37:28 PDT
In this thesis, I address two puzzles regarding Japan’s security policy: (1) its minimalist military posture despite its economic power during the Cold War and (2) the recent shift from this minimalist security policy to an assertive one marked by a strengthening of its international security role and military. I argue that although many IR scholars, mainly from the realist camp, claim that the formation of the original security policy (puzzle 1) and subsequent transformation (puzzle 2) is driven by the state’s rational response to external conditions in the international security environment, it can more adequately be explained by the complex dynamics of internal contestation among “identity groups” with different visions of Japan’s national identity and interest.
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Daisuke MinamiChallenges to Policy Implementation: An Examination of an Integrated Health Care Delivery System Demonstration Projecthttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/38
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/38Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:13:03 PDT
US health care costs are among the highest of all industrialized nations. In an effort to reduce costs and improve health outcomes, new delivery models – including accountable care organizations – have been developed. Yet, as revealed through interviews with key participants in Hennepin County's delivery project, significant challenges to implementing them exist. They include obstacles that inherently arise from implementing a means-tested health care policy within a competitive, federalized governing structure. Because these challenges are not unique to Hennepin County, this project can help similar projects and may push policy towards the integration of the health care and social service systems.
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Kaitlin A. RohWhose Line is it Anyway? Examining the Media's Coverage of Cabinet Secretaries' Speecheshttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/37
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/37Thu, 10 May 2012 12:05:46 PDT
Previous research suggests that politicians and the press spin news stories through their remarks and coverage of remarks to their own benefit — but is this also true for remarks made by Cabinet Secretaries? For this project, I compared remarks given by DHS Secretaries with newspaper articles about those remarks. I find that Secretaries’ ability to shape issues is initially limited by the press; however, Secretaries succeed in conveying their message eventually. This is important because citizens should know what government officials are saying and what those statements mean; therefore, media coverage of those statements should be critical and accurate.
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Matthew G. MullarkyDeciphering a Duality: Understanding Conflicting Standards in Sex & Violence Censorship in U.S. Obscenity Lawhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/36
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/36Thu, 10 May 2012 12:02:47 PDT
This research examines the division in US obscenity law that enables strict sex censorship while overlooking violence. By investigating the social and legal development of obscenity in US culture, I argue that the contemporary duality in obscenity censorship standards arose from a family of forces consisting of faith, economy, and identity in early American history. While sexuality ingrained itself in American culture as a commodity in need of regulation, violence was decentralized from the state and proliferated. This phenomenon led to a prioritization of suppressing sexual speech over violent speech. This paper traces the emergence this duality and its source.
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Rushabh P. BhaktaTheology of Global Citizenship: Belonging Beyond Boundaries, God Within Boundarieshttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/35
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/35Thu, 10 May 2012 09:38:30 PDT
Though creating identity and belongingness under the sovereign requires an enclosure by boundaries, the very act of drawing boundaries imposes inevitable challenges. The limitations of the Westphalian system based on territorial boundaries are becoming more tangible with transnational flows threatening individual’s sense of belonging and the state’s exercise of sovereignty. Global citizenship is suggested as a possible “solution” transcending these arbitrarily drawn boundaries. Nonetheless, my political theological examination concludes that global citizenship is yet another translation of the human beings’ old wish for belonging to, protection from, and unity under a “god,” albeit with new boundaries that differentiate usfrom them.
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Jisoo HongDemocratization As Discursive Transformationhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/34
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/34Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:50:07 PDT
The current literature has conceptualized democratization as a linear process of structural transformation whereby a state transitions from a repressive regime to a democracy. This thesis asserts that democratization cannot be reduced to a process of systems change. Through a rhetorical analysis of Vaclav Havel's speeches in the aftermath of the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, I demonstrate that the experience of democratization is rooted in historical and cultural resources and that local actors can offer valuable alternative perspectives on democracy. Embracing such alternative political imaginations is a way to democratize the concept of democratization itself.
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Vera SidlovaAn 'Asia Model'? A Relationist View on Regionalism and China's Regional Identityhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/33
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/33Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:45:00 PDT
In an increasingly interconnected global order, governments are experiencing growing pressures to engage in cooperative and integrative processes. Indeed, regionalism has become a primary objective for all regions. East Asia is no exception. Using the "European Union" as a model, scholars generally regard East Asian regionalism as a "failure." With an emphasis on 'process' over 'progress' East Asian regionalist institutions lack the institutional formality and accountability mechanisms valued by Western standards on regionalism. I do not dispute these claims about East Asian regionalism so much as to propose a different interpretation allowed by applying a different theoretical lens. I subscribe to a relationalist framework that emphasizes relations vis-a-vis networks and identity, instead of a substantialist framework (the study of physical institutional entities). This allows me to analyze the ways in which relational processes in East Asia are changing the very identities and objectives of member nations. I analyze foreign policy speeches and documents released by the People's Republic of China during the span of 3 essential time periods: the Mao Zedong era, the era of reform led by Deng Xiaoping, and the current administration of President Hu Jintao. In these documents I examine particular shifts in China's guiding foreign policy ideology in order to observe a growing Chinese 'regional identity'. Through this I defend the idea that there is a dynamic and differentiated 'East Asian' Model' of regionalism.
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Shelle ShimizuBuilding an Asia-Pacific Security Community: A Role for Australia?http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/31
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/31Tue, 03 May 2011 06:31:37 PDT
Australia’s foreign policy has recently shifted from great-power dependency towards self-reliance in the Asia-Pacific. In light of this shift, there have been calls for the creation of a regional security community. This project looks at two existing security communities, the OSCE and ASEAN, to ascertain the necessary conditions for building a security community. From there, I examine whether or not these conditions exist in the Asia-Pacific, and investigate Australia’s ability to produce the remaining conditions. I conclude that Australia does not have the diplomatic power to overcome regional competition, and that rivalries amongst regional powers mitigate against the community’s creation.
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Jonathan K. ChenBidding (Fair)well to Due Process: The Need for a Fairer Final Stage in Special Education Dispute Resolutionhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/30
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/30Mon, 02 May 2011 11:54:07 PDT
In the United States, 6.8 million children receive special education services, and disputes over their education can become highly adversarial. This thesis examines due process hearings, which are the last resort for parents in special education conflicts, and evaluates the fairness of those hearings. Using interviews with judges and data from hearings between 2000-2009 in Wisconsin and Minnesota, I find that special education due process hearings are unfair because they inconsistently provide procedural protections, damage parent-school relationships, and provide insufficient outcomes for students. I conclude that a new system should replace special education due process hearings in the future.
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Calanthe Cope-KastenThe Emergence of Newer Social Movements in Argentina: The Necessity of Ideological Change for Transgressive Direct Actionhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/29
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/29Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:26:01 PST
I argue that novel action occurs when people adopt new identities and reinterpret their environment. To support this, I examine participation in the recovered business and popular high school movements in Argentina. I develop and employ a dynamic cognitive model of participation in social movements and argue that it best explains participation in these movements. I find that individuals with different roles in a movement and those with similar roles in different movements follow different patterns of ideological change. I also find that ideological change can come without interacting with competing ideologies, but doing so can bring more extensive changes.
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Eric BlomPolitical Process and Policy Moderation: Explaining Institutional Durability in the Norwegian Oil Sectorhttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/28
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/28Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:14:56 PDT
This thesis analyzes the Norwegian state's persistent involvement in the oil sector despite global changes towards privatization and liberalization. Drawing on primary sources and secondary literature, I investigate two policy events in 1984 and 2001. I argue that the persistence of state involvement in the industry may be explained by the political processes that underpin the formation of state oil policy. Norwegian party politicians have to accommodate two traditional conflict-dimensions, the left-right and center-periphery, in order to create broad consensus around a unified national oil policy. Taken as a whole, these processes lend themselves more to slow policy change, than rapid shifts away from the past social democratic model of state involvement.
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Paal RobsonConstructing a Citizenry: Variance in Civic Education in Minnesota's Secondary Schoolshttp://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/27
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/poli_honors/27Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:28:49 PDT
My project has two aims. First, I seek to fill the gap in basic descriptive data about the state of civic education in Minnesota's high schools. Second, I attempt to shed light on civic education in the state by exploring influences to it. I argue that demographic characteristics of civics teachers and the communities in which they teach influence both civics curriculum and teacher's conceptions of civic education. In a nation that depends on citizen participation for the functioning of the state, it is important to understand that the ways we teach students to participate may differ across locales.
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Hopi Costello